Violent protests erupted on September 13, after a dawn raid by local authorities rounded up 13 people in Wukan. They were charged with illegal assembly and using threats to force others to protest in the aftermath of Lin’s sentencing.

Up to 1,000 police officers equipped with tear gas and rubber bullets were then deployed after the dawn raids last week. They were searching for six suspects close to Lin, including a number of his family members. The police faced off against protesting villagers armed with broken bricks and little else. Unconfirmed reports say more than 100 villagers have been arrested; some have reported police using live ammunition on protesters and also the death of an elderly woman in her 80s, caused by rubber bullets. Paramilitary police have been going from door to door searching houses for suspects. Authorities have offered RMB10,000 ($1,500) cash reward offered for tip offs on the six suspects.

The village is under lock down with many fearing to leave their homes. Officials have blocked visitors and food supplies from entering into Wukan forcing resident villagers to sneak across to neighboring villages to obtain food supplies.

[…] Wukan has yet again become a testing ground for the central Chinese government. It is highlighting the deficiencies in not only China’s human rights record, but also brings into question the level of coordination between often corrupt municipal authorities and national authorities. Wukan village is once again receiving too much global media attention, and that means the central government is forced to deftly deal with what should be a local government issue. While Lin has already been sentenced, more heads will roll in the coming months. [Source]

The detentions underscore the collapse of what rights advocates once saw as a “Wukan model” for encouraging direct elections at the village level in China’s one-party political system. Once voted into power, the inexperienced village leaders struggled to convince more senior Communist party officials to return land sold by the previous committee. Bickering, protests and corruption allegations further undermined their effectiveness — and minimize the risk that demonstrations will spread to other localities.

[…] “The implementation of grassroots democracy is often flawed and faces multiple problems, for example a fragile social foundation and weak sense of the rule of law among both the local government and the people,” said Hu Xingdou, an economics professor at the Beijing Institute of Technology who studies rural China.

Even before the corruption allegations in Wukan, which has about 13,000 people, the village’s old guard was making a comeback. In 2014, three members of the ousted village leadership were appointed to the party committee. As tensions mounted, another former protest leader quit government and left for the U.S. amid fear of retaliation.

[…] “There remain deep contractions between local governance and hierarchical control, as well as contradictions between the economic interests of villagers and the economic and state interests of systems within which village communities exist,” said Andrew Wedeman, director of China Studies at Georgia State University. “I thus do not necessarily see Wukan as a harbinger of things to come so much as evidence that, the more things change, the more they stay the same.” [Source]

Zhuang Liehong held demonstrations on Monday during Chinese Premier Li Keqiang’s visit to New York to attend the the 71st Session of the UN General Assembly. Zhuang demanded that Beijing release the detained Wukan villagers.

Zhuang said that communications in Wukan are being heavily censored, making it difficult for the villagers to send images and videos to the outside world.

He added that security forces are stationed throughout the village. Mainland media reports that there is peace in the village are false, he said.

Zhuang fled to the United States in 2014 after leading protests in the village against land grabs and corruption. His parents remain in Wukan.

Zhuang said that he could not contact his mother because authorities had confiscated her cell phone two days ago. He has not heard from his father either, who was taken away before the crackdown on protests, according to Zhuang. [Source]

A number of activists who showed solidarity with Wukan protesters have been jailed and questioned for their activism. At the same time, many in Hong Kong attended a candlelight vigil to protest the Chinese government’s handling of the recent Wukan demonstrations. A Global Times op-ed by Shan Renping (a pen-name of editor Hu Xijin) labels the vigil a prop used by Western media to “stoke unrest.” Yang Fan, Qiao Long, and Lau Siu-fung at RFA report:

Shenzhen-based rights activist Huang Meijuan was handed a 10-day administrative jail term by police in Shenzhen, which lies just across the internal immigration border with Hong Kong, her husband told RFA.

Wu Bin, an activist known online as Xiucai Jianghu, said Huang was detained by officers from Shenzhen’s Buji police station on charges of “spreading rumors” on Sept. 14 after she posted a Voice of America report on the Wukan crackdown protests to social media.

[…] Meanwhile, dozens of rights activists and democratic politicians in Hong Kong staged a candlelight vigil in support of Wukan.

[…] “Today we have Wukan, tomorrow this sort of violence may occur in Hong Kong,” Kwok told the 100-strong rally, who chanted “release Lin Zuluan and all Wukan villagers” and tied black ribbons to the fence outside Beijing’s representative office in the former British colony. [Source]

In retrospect, the Nanfang Daily story — reprised elsewhere, including the tabloid Southern Metropolis Daily — seems a cynical and perverse ploy. Consider, for example, that around 3AM on September 13, the morning after the appearance of the aforementioned story, police conducted surprise raids on village homes, rounding up those suspected of organising fresh protests over dirty land deals. And then listen to Wu Jianjun, chief of the Frontier Defence Corps in the city of Lufeng, quoted in the harmonious Nanfang Daily story: “Our task today is mostly to do a major dragnet clean of Golden Harbour Avenue and New China East Street. Then we need to disinfect the flower plots, sewers, garbage cans and other key areas, ridding them of rodents.”

[…] Side by side, this pair of articles suggests two important things. First of all, it appears that there was strong vertical coordination in Guangdong over the issue of Wukan, with endorsement through the provincial newspaper of the approach taken by the Shanwei leadership. Second, it appears that authorities at the city level were given a free rein not just in handling unfolding events in Wukan but also in doling out the facts.

This second point is an especially interesting one in light of the larger politics under President Xi Jinping. Within the sphere of China observation, we often talk about Xi the “strongman” consolidating his grip, Xi “as the core,” or Xi as the COE, the “chairman of everything.” Xi’s centralising grip on the media, which must all be “surnamed Party,” is a crucial part of this consolidation. And yet it seems, in the case of Wukan, that local leaders are being empowered to conduct “public opinion warfare,” to borrow a phrase from the most recent commentary from the editor-in-chief of the Global Times. [Source]

Reporters from two Hong Kong newspapers, the South China Morning Post and the Chinese-language Ming Pao, were assaulted Wednesday night while conducting interviews and later detained for several hours, both newspapers reported. Two reporters from the news site Hong Kong 01 were also detained, the site said.

The South China Morning Post reported that a group of unidentified men stormed into a home and pushed the newspaper’s journalist to the ground. Ming Pao said some in the group were wearing police uniforms, and that someone punched its two journalists even after they had followed orders to squat on the ground.

The journalists were later taken to a police station and questioned for several hours, the newspapers reported. According to Ming Pao, a government official asked the journalists to sign a pledge not to do any more reporting.

Both newspapers and the news site said their reporters were eventually taken to the Hong Kong border. [Source]

The Post is highly concerned about the incident and condemn the detention of journalists.

[…] Our reporter and two other Hong Kong journalists from another publication were invited by a resident to a villager’s house for an interview on Wednesday.

[…] The Post journalist, who has proper journalist credentials issued by Beijing authorising him to work on the mainland, was released after questioning.

[…] The Hong Kong Journalists Association said in a statement issued on Thursday morning that it “strongly condemns Chinese public security officers’ violent treatment against the Hong Kong journalists”.

Authorities are on a hunt for foreign journalists inside Wukan village. BBC reporters were expelled from the scene earlier. Since Wednesday afternoon, loudspeakers have broadcast messages to villagers telling them that those who could offer clues to finding “foreign forces” hiding in the village would be awarded 20,000 yuan (about $3000), villagers told Ming Pao (link in Chinese). Earlier, police arrested 13 village protestors for “disturbing public space and transportation orders.” The reward for tips of the whereabouts of the five other wanted villagers is 100,000 yuan. [Source]

“This time it was a wild crackdown. They went after everyone, chasing them up into their houses, beating people.”

As she spoke, peeking nervously from behind curtains in her home, scores of riot and security police tightened a cordon around Wukan.

[…] Blue teargas cartridges could still be seen strewn in the narrow alleyways, with black burn marks on concrete.

“The whole village hasn’t done anything illegal, we just want old Lin (Zuluan) to come out and to get our land back,” said a villager surnamed Zhang. “But they don’t care if we’re guilty or not guilty. They just beat us.” [Source]

[…] Locals on Thursday said the atmosphere was the most tense they had witnessed. Traffic in and out of the area had been stopped, people checked at entry points, new surveillance cameras ­installed near the village plaza, and door-to-door searches continued for five wanted residents.

The previous reward for tip-offs about their whereabouts was raised from 100,000 yuan (HK$116,000) to 150,000 yuan. One of the wanted suspects is Yang Shaoji, the brother of [jailed former village committee chief] Lin’s wife, Yang Zhen.

[…] Villagers said they had to trek kilometres over fields to buy food secretly as supplies were running low because of the lockdown. [Source]

On Wednesday, the Lufeng City Public Security Bureau, which oversees Wukan, offered a 100,000 yuan ($15,000) reward for detaining any one of five “suspected criminals”: Wei Yonghan, Cai Jiaxia, Yang Shaoji, Liu Hanchai and Hong Yongzhong.

“Those who harbor or shelter these five shall be prosecuted in accordance with the law,” police said, adding that those who took part in demonstrations could be “pardoned from legal responsibilities” if they stopped protesting immediately. [Source]

More than two months have passed [since Lin Zuluan’s detention], and a majority of Wukan villagers have calmed down and only about a hundred villagers are still creating a disturbance. The reasons behind their moves are complicated. Most of them are Lin’s family members, and some others are so poor that they hope to make some money through inciting trouble. And a few are taking orders from foreign forces.

Some foreign media sent their reporters to the village to wait for conflicts between police and villagers to happen right after they heard about the Wukan incident. Unfortunately, they waited for nothing in the end. The local government chose to avoid conflicts and confrontations. Even though some foreign media have been unscrupulously inciting, planning, and directing chaos, local police have not resorted to violence to solve the issue. After Lin’s case was filed in court, heard and judged, more and more people have discovered the true motive of those who have been creating trouble.

Obviously, some foreign forces have lost patience over the local government’s composure in China. They don’t want this “fight for human rights” to end that easily. So they exaggerated everything they heard and even faked the grandmother’s death. [Source]

Human rights activists in Hong Kong, about a four-hour drive to the southwest, believe the crackdown could represent an unprecedented push to silence Wukan, whose villagers received international attention after an 2011 uprising led to authorities granting direct village-wide elections.

[…] Villagers, including old people, pelted police with bricks as they advanced with shields, batons and helmets, with clouds of tear gas wafting down the street, video footage seen by Reuters showed.

[…] One Wukan resident reached by Reuters by mobile phone said riot police hit people with batons, setting off tear gas grenades and firing rubber bullets at villagers, including old people.

He said police had entered the village in their “thousands”. Others said between 300 and 400 police were involved in the operation, including house-to-house searches.

“The riot police started attacking and shooting at us,” he said. “They are still fighting now. We want them to leave.” […] [Source]

Following initial reports on the ongoing clash, CDT resident cartoonist Badiucao has drawn the name of the village with bullet holes substituting one crucial stroke.

“Their behaviors have severely affected local life and production and exerted a bad influence. Police have therefore arrested the 13 according to law, in an effort to safeguard the interest of the masses and restore order,” local police said in a statement published online.

[… Amnesty International’s Patrick] Poon said the village was now on lockdown, “no one can enter, information is blocked.”
“The atmosphere there is very tense,” he added.

[…] Poon said Amnesty is concerned that since information is no longer getting out, many more arrests and detentions could take place without being reported. [Source]

An official statement issued Tuesday said 13 villagers in Wukan were arrested, allegedly for inciting a mob and spreading rumors.

The statement levies several allegations at “a small number of lawless persons,” including disturbing school, preventing fishermen from working and hampering shopkeepers. It says officials tried to “educate and persuade” protest leaders, but that guidance was evidently disregarded.

“In order to safeguard the interests of the masses and restore the normal order of production and local people’s lives, local police decided to take action and apprehended them,” the statement said.

Chinese law requires official permission be granted for all protests, a condition that is almost never met. Large-scale protests are usually met with action intended to quell dissent. In recent decades, China has allowed a small number of elections for positions below the township level, though national and provincial party officials continue to be selected internally. [Source]

BBC News producer Xinyan Yu and others have been tweeting more images and video footage from the clash in Wukan

Chinese authorities have issued a formal arrest notice for citizen journalist Lu Yuyu after detaining him for five weeks, Chinese news outlet Weiquanwang reported on Thursday.

[…] Lu’s lawyer, Xiao Yunyang, reportedly received a phone call from the Dali Procuratorate which informed him that an official arrest notice had been issued for Lu. The status of Lu’s girlfriend remains unknown.

Li, who was forced to drop out of a translation and interpretation degree at Guangzhou’s prestigious Zhongshan University after publishing articles out of the reach of Chinese government internet censors, was also formally arrested on the same charges at the same time, [defense lawyer] Xiao [Yunyang] said.

[…] Li had already been targeted for “chats” with China’s state security police, and withdrew from her university amid huge political pressure on the university and on her family, Weiquanwang said.

[…] A former migrant worker, Lu called his online operation “Not the News,” in a nod to the widespread censorship of “sensitive” stories of mass protests by the ruling Chinese Communist Party and the media outlets under its control.

Activists have said the sort of data Lu compiled, which last year including details of more than 30,000 “mass incidents” not widely reported in China, could easily have made him a target. […] [Source]

A former leader of a Chinese village who was democratically elected five years ago after taking a stand against corruption has been arrested for taking bribes, said Chinese state news agency Xinhua.

[…] The local prosecutor of Lufeng City said Lin had accepted a substantial amount in bribes for village projects since 2012. Lin admitted to accepting bribes in a video last month, Xinhua said late on Thursday.

[…] Reuters was unable to contact Lin and it wasn’t clear whether Lin had legal representation after two lawyers hired by his family were blocked by authorities from taking on his case.

In 2014, two former deputy village chiefs were jailed for two and four years respectively for bribery, around the time of another village election. Those who knew the men said they were framed. [Source]

“No matter how hard the authorities try to smear Lin’s character, our eyes are crystal clear,” one Wukan resident said. “Lin’s respected reputation is not something that can be distorted by some articles online … That thousands of villagers are marching every day is testament to him. [The authorities] have underestimated the people of Wukan.”

[…] Last month, Lin planned to spearhead village complaints about land use but he was detained by police in a midnight raid on his home on June 18. Authorities in Lufeng and Shanwei accused Lin of taking 80,000 yuan (HK$93,000) in kickbacks over the construction of a running track a local school.

Back in 2011, the events in Wukan were seen as a milestone, as a small Chinese community challenged local authorities and demanded democracy, at least at the village level. The villagers’ demonstrations, the government’s response and a resulting compromise between the two sides were considered models that might be copied and applied to the thousands of similar local disputes that erupt across the country every year.

But the resumption of protests now suggests that Wukan’s underlying problems were not fixed.

[…] A villager who spoke on condition of anonymity says that now, just like five years ago, protests were triggered by the actions of property developers, who took village land without compensating residents.

“Secretary Lin intervened with the authorities on our behalf, but the authorities took no action,” he said. “At the villagers’ request, Lin called a meeting and decided to keep protesting, and as a result, he was taken away.”Land grabs are a common problem in rural China, and especially in Guangdong province, where urbanization is rapidly swallowing up farmland. […] [Source]

Elections were allowed to take place in Wukan in March 2012 but they were not as ‘free’ as widely presented. There were widespread complaints of police intimidation and threats against key activists, to block more ‘radical’ elements from standing. The substantive issue – reclaiming the stolen land – remained unresolved and has now erupted in the latest round of protests.

After the elections, through which Lin and other protest leaders took control of the village committee, the higher authorities pursued a twin strategy of persecution of the most radical layers of the Wukan movement, along with financial and administrative sabotage to deny Wukan’s elected leaders any possibility to resolve the land question.

The aim of the regional CCP bureaucrats has been to protect their own interests (which may well include hiding their own gains from illicit land deals) and at the same time to discredit Wukan’s experiment with village ‘democracy’. The net result is that almost five years after the original protests, the demands of the original Wukan movement are no closer to fulfilment. “It’s like being given a check for two million yuan, but it bounces when you go to the bank,” is how one villager described the promises that were made in 2011 by Wang Yang and Co to demobilise the mass protests. [Source]

Marching by the thousands this week in stifling heat through their small coastal village, residents of Wukan carried Chinese flags and shouted out slogans in support of the Communist Party. That was just to protect themselves from retribution by the riot police, who watched them closely but did not intervene. Their real message was in other chants: “Give us back our land!” and “Free Secretary Lin!”

The secretary in question was their village chief, Lin Zulian, whom they elected in 2012 in what was widely hailed at the time as a breakthrough for grassroots democracy. Mr Lin had led Wukan in a months-long rebellion against local authorities. Villagers kicked out party officials and police from their offices in protest against the alleged seizure of some of Wukan’s land by corrupt officials who had lined their pockets with the proceeds of selling it. Police responded by blockading the village, turning it into a cause célèbre—including in some of the feistier of China’s heavily censored media. In the end the government backed down: it allowed Wukan to hold unusually free elections and it promised to sort out the land dispute. The “Wukan model” became Chinese reformists’ shorthand for what they hoped would be a new way of defusing unrest.

[…] They have been disappointed. Villagers did not get their land back, or the money some wanted in lieu of it. Mr Lin, who won another landslide victory in elections two years ago, announced plans on June 18th to launch a new campaign for the return of the land. That was clearly too much for the local government: Mr Lin was promptly arrested on charges of corruption. Angry residents took to the streets again. [Source]

Prosecutors have accused Lin of “pocketing a large sum of money” through contracting village infrastructure projects.

But local people remember earlier clashes in 2011, when Lin directed a series of non-violent protests over the mass selloff of land by his predecessor Xue Chang, during which protester Xue Jinbo died in police custody, igniting mass displays of public mourning that further kindled public anger.

[…W]hile Lin was appointed head of the village committee, and several of the 2011 protest leaders were elected as a result, very little was done to retrieve Wukan’s lost farmland, villagers said.

Then, in July 2014, former protest leaders Hong Ruichao and Yang Semao, who had both served on the newly elected village committee, were jailed for four and two years respectively for “accepting bribes.” Relatives said the charges against them were trumped-up by local officials in an act of political revenge. [Source]

Ge Yongxi posted on Weibo yesterday that Lin’s three sons had hired him as his defence lawyer. However, he was notified by his firm that the Justice Bureau has ordered the firm to return the money on Wednesday, said the post. This post, along with reposts by others, have been taken down.

[…] When contacted by HK01 yesterday, Ge Yongxi said there was no legal basis for the Bureau ordering him to withdraw from the case. He said Guangzhou’s Justice Bureau, Public Security Bureau and Internal Security Bureau have requested to meet with him, causing him to feel that his personal safety is under threat.

[…] China’s Criminal Procedures law states that “detained criminal suspects or defendants may also have their guardian or close relatives retain a defender on their behalf,” in Article 33.

Ge said he would talk to Lin’s sons to decide what to do next, said Apple Daily. [Source]

Last night, Yu tried to make it to the village, but was intercepted by authorities.

“While on his way to Wukan last night, he was stopped by local judicial officials who asked him to go home,” a non-government organization worker, who stays with Lin’s family in Wukan, told VOA.

Upon Yu’s arrival in Shanwei city, where Wukan village is located, Yu wrote on Weibo that his family called and conveyed a threatening message from the authorities: “If you return home tonight, nothing will happen. If not, things will get ugly tomorrow.”

]]>194824Minitrue: Do Not Report on Wukan Mass Incidenthttp://chinadigitaltimes.net/2016/06/minitrue-former-wukan-chief-admits-guilt/
Tue, 21 Jun 2016 22:59:57 +0000http://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=194752The following censorship instructions, issued to the media by government authorities, have been leaked and distributed online. The name of the issuing body has been omitted to protect the source.

Regarding former village committee chief of Wukan, Guangdong, Lin Zuluan being investigated and admitting his guilt, websites are strictly prohibited from releasing or re-publishing any news, photos, video, or information related to the mass incident in the village. All websites are to strictly control related commentary, firmly punish the accounts of those who maliciously distribute information, and report progress to superiors. (June 21, 2016) [Chinese]

The statement was quickly called into question by Mr. Lin’s wife, Yang Zhen, who told reporters that she believed his confession was forced. “This is just to trick people,” she said, according to Apple Daily, a Hong Kong-based newspaper. “He is very clean.”

[…] Local officials have taken other steps to undercut the protests in Wukan. They have sent riot police officers and warned residents against “drastic measures.” [Source]

[…N]early a thousand villagers, including children and the disabled, disputed the video, demanding his release in a long procession around the village, ignoring warnings from authorities to not stir up trouble.

“Village chief Lin is innocent,” they chanted. “Return village chief Lin to us.”

“We’re not afraid of them,” said one villager, Li Junmin, who heckled a group of riot police outside a police station as he passed. “We’ve not done anything illegal and are just demanding what’s right. Why would they get us for that?”

Many protesters, in a sign of the delicate balance between different layers of authority in China, also waved red China flags while chanting “long live the Communist Party of China”. [Source]

One resident said her son was forced at school to sign a document stating Lin had received bribes, and those who refused to sign were not allowed to leave. Other villagers said the school extended its hours to prevent pupils from joining the protest. The school denied the allegation.

A Shanwei official accused Apple Daily and Initium Media of inciting, planning and directing protests at the village.

Shi Shuoyan, the head of the city press office, was quoted by mainland media as saying: “We welcome overseas media to interview and report, according to the law and regulations, objectively and fairly.

“However, a few overseas media, such as Apple Daily and Initium Media, have been inciting, planning and directing in Wukan. We will take measures according to the law.” [Source]

We don’t know how this latest episode in Wukan’s democratic story will end, but already reports suggest that anywhere between two to three thousand people are publicly protesting at a local police station. It’s notable that Lin was brought in for corruption charges too. Chinese President Xi Jinping has famously sought to weed out corrupt officials at all levels of Party business, and China watchers don’t doubt that Xi’s deployed the feared Central Commission for Discipline Inspection for political ends in the past. Finally, China’s powerful state censorship apparatus has already taken to blocking the terms “villagers” and “Wukan” from popular social networking site Weibo.

Bringing Lin down does send an important message to provincial party chiefs who may consider Wang’s 2011-2012 precedent as a model worth emulating. After all, the original Wukan episode took place under the last generation of CCP leadership, under Hu Jintao. Wang, who developed a reputation as a ‘liberal,’ not only for his intervention in Wukan, but for his progressive ‘Happy Guangdong’ development model, was a Hu protege. In contrast to the Hu era, Xi’s project to consolidate power under the centralized leadership of the Party necessitates the erosion of any idea that the sort of flexibility shown in 2011 could be tolerated.

[…] In any case, Lin’s arrest doesn’t bode well for the Wukan experiment and could be the end of the Wukan story more broadly. In some ways, the 2016 protests will offer a real world test of exactly how different the Xi-era response to popular uprising can be to the Hu-era leadership. As of this writing, the protests continue. One hopes the protesters and Lin find a satisfactory and just solution to their predicament, free of coercion or violence. [Source]

As often happens during protests, Wukan residents soon took to the internet. They posted videos and pictures of the village surrounded by police, and shared images of recovered surveillance video of Lin being taken away in the middle of the night. But in what has become a common tale pitting netizens against China’s increasingly controlled web, many posts were quickly taken down in a swift flurry of censorship. On June 19 and June 20, “Wukan” and “villagers” were the most censored terms on Weibo, according to censorship tracker Weiboscope, operated by the Journalism and Media Studies Center at the University of Hong Kong. Lin’s account is now deactivated. After the extensive elimination of Wukan-related posts and comments, only a few news stories from certain media and updates from government accounts are still available on Weibo. In an open letter published online by the local police department, villagers have been asked to cooperate with Lin’s investigation and to avoid “extreme actions.”

Only a fraction of the hundreds of comments that poured in on social media remain, but what’s left evinces support of Lin and the villagers. A user who claimed to be from Wukan wrote, “Secretary Lin is the one we voted for, one person, one vote. Our Wukan needs Secretary Lin.” The user also disavowed the strong police showing to arrest a “more than 70-year-old man.” Another added, “Everyone in Lufeng knows about this. He is a white-haired old man fighting for his people. He’s been laden with trumped-up charges.” One Weibo user asked if the act was “revenge” for Lin’s previous activism. [Source]

Since directives are sometimes communicated orally to journalists and editors, who then leak them online, the wording published here may not be exact. The date given may indicate when the directive was leaked, rather than when it was issued. CDT does its utmost to verify dates and wording, but also takes precautions to protect the source. See CDT’s collection of Directives from the Ministry of Truth since 2011.

]]>194752Campaign Against Lawyers’ “Criminal Gang” Broadenshttp://chinadigitaltimes.net/2015/07/campaign-against-rights-lawyers-criminal-gang-broadens/
Mon, 13 Jul 2015 13:59:03 +0000http://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=184789Chinese authorities’ sweeping move against dozens of rights lawyers and activists late last week has expanded further over the weekend. The number of people reportedly involved has surged to over 100 across China, and the offices of three law practices—most notably Beijing Fengrui Law Firm—have been searched. Fengrui lawyers Wang Yu, Zhou Shifeng, Wang Quanzhang, and Huang Liqun, as well as Wang’s husband Bao Longjun and Fengrui administrative assistant Liu Sixin have all been criminally detained.

In an article on Sunday headlined “Uncovering the dark story of ‘rights defence’.”, spanning two-thirds of its second page, People’s Daily said the Ministry of Public Security launched the operation to “smash a major criminal gang that had used the Beijing Fengrui law firm as a platform since July 2012 to draw attention to sensitive cases, seriously disturbing social order”.

The article said the firm’s director Zhou Shifeng, his assistant Liu Sixin, lawyers Wang Quanzhang, Huang Liqun, Wang Yu and her husband Bao Longjun were in criminal detention for “seriously violating the law”. It did not specify a charge. On the mainland, police can detain suspects for up to 37 days before prosecutors approve their formal arrests.

It said “the criminal gang” comprised Zhou, Wang Yu, Wang Quanzhang, Huang as well as Liu, Bao and high-profile activist Wu Gan [background via CDT], who masterminded many plots in the name of “rights defence, justice and public interest”. It accused them of “colluding with petitioners to disturb social order and to reach their goals with ulterior motives”.

[…] People’s Daily said Wu was “a key player” in drawing a huge public outcry over the fatal shooting of an unarmed man, Xu Chunhe, by a policeman in Qingan, Heilongjiang [background via CDT], in May, offering 100,000 yuan (HK$126,000) for any footage showing the incident. Other rights lawyers were accused of involvement. “These lawyers publicly challenged the court … and mobilised troublemakers to rally petitioners … outside the court,” it said. “They are the direct pushers.” [Source]

First, it was the lawyers’ job to hype up an incident, according to Zhai Yanmin, a major organizer of the group.

[…] Then the job shifted to social media celebrities and petitioners. Wu Gan, known for “boldly” stirring controversial incidents, posted messages on his social media account, offering 100,000 yuan (16,106 U.S. dollars) for any video clips that have caught the “truth” of the incident.

Zhai then hired “petitioners” to shout slogans, sit quietly and raise defiant signs to support the lawyers. According to one suspect surnamed Li, she was paid 600 yuan for carrying a sign onsite.

There are others responsible for filming scenes of “mass incidents” and posting them on some overseas websites to manipulate public opinion.

“They have been following the protocol in hyping up such incidents since 2013, when I first entered the business,” said Zhai, adding many of his peers were resentful of the Party and the government, taking pride in being detained by the police.

[…] The suspects, Zhai, Wu, Huang Liqun and Liu Xing have reflected on their alleged crimes and realized their harmful impact, said the statement. [Source]

The rule of law is meant to maintain social order and uphold justice. It should promote social harmony, but radical human rights lawyers are intentionally creating conflict between the government and the public. Through false information, they paint the government as a “protector of evil,” and law-breakers as “brave citizens.” Thus, the truth has been blurred as individual cases were portrayed as the “people’s fight against tyranny,” and promoted as “the real defender of people’s rights.”

China is committed to promoting the rule of law. Yet a handful of extremists are making every effort to discredit the government, and that the radical lawyers are the “good guys.” This is no longer the rule of law, but politically-motivated provocation. It is regrettable to see a few legal professionals trying to obstruct the rule of law. If public officials are involved in a case, radical lawyers may appear to stoke public opinion. No country would encourage their lawyers to operate this way. [Source]

We can of course spend much time conducting significant amounts of analysis to explain why the authorities’ allegations are either unfounded or deeply misleading. However, the fact that the very mission of lawyers is to protect rights needs no analysis. The fact that ordinary people who are being persecuted have the right to seek the assistance of lawyers needs no analysis. The fact that under a system without judicial independence, ordinary citizens and lawyers are forced, as a last resort, to mass protests and fundraising for group litigation in order to seek justice from the Courts, needs no analysis. As such, the fact that the recent arrests, detentions and disappearances are without basis needs no analysis. [Source]

New York University law professor Jerome Cohen, one of the first American lawyers to work in China after the country opened up in the late 1970s, described the sweep as “insane.” China’s leaders “must be in desperate straits to engage in this extraordinary, coordinated attack on human-rights lawyers,” he said.

Frustration with China’s Communist Party-controlled courts has given rise to a coterie of self-described “die-hard” lawyers who use confrontational tactics in and outside the courtroom in defense of clients whose cases are considered politically sensitive. Such lawyers have sometimes had run-ins with local authorities, but William Nee, China researcher at Amnesty International, said the orders for this week’s sweep likely came from Beijing.

[…] President Xi has made rule of law a cornerstone of his public agenda, but has also escalated restrictions on civil-society groups since coming to power. “The crackdown over the last two years has been so systematic that the attack on human-rights lawyers is the next logical step for authorities—but that’s especially worrying as they are the last gatekeeper of civil society for China,” said Maya Wang of Human Rights Watch.

“Of course, if human-rights lawyers can be neutralized, then the party will have the ideal situation: laws that look good on their face, but are never applied in ways that will interfere with government politics,” Mr. Cohen said. [Source]

The real reason for this crackdown is a rising rights consciousness among ordinary Chinese. Though they know the legal system offers scant protection, many Chinese citizens are willing to file a lawsuit when their civil or property rights are violated. And though they know the result could be prison or worse, they often make a fuss using the Internet and every other means at their disposal.

The stubborn lawyers who defend these stubborn clients represent a challenge to the Party’s claim to stand above the rule of law. And that is why extralegal methods are used against them. Most of the families of the detained lawyers have not even been notified, also in violation of Chinese law. They have simply disappeared into secret prisons.

This mistreatment of legal professionals is one more escalation by supreme leader Xi Jinping in his crackdown on all political dissent. It reveals to the world again that the rule of law in China is simply whatever the Communist Party says it is. [Source]

Over the last few days we have noted with growing alarm reports that Chinese public security forces have systematically detained individuals who share the common attribute of peacefully defending the rights of others, including those who lawfully challenge official policies. ‎We are deeply concerned that the broad scope of the new National Security Law [background via CDT] is being used as a legal facade to commit human rights abuses. We strongly urge China to respect the rights of all of its citizens and to release all those who have recently been detained for seeking to protect the rights of Chinese citizens. [Source]

[…] Each year, according to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a research organization under the powerful State Council, there are more than 100,000 “mass incidents,” the officially accepted name for protests, riots, and other forms of social disorder in China. But because most mass incidents are confined to their respective localities, people outside of these regions scarcely know about them. As a result, according to University of Bridgeport political science professor Stephen Hess, “the outbreak of protest” in China, “while frequent and often highly charged, has emerged as a fragmented and localized phenomenon.”

Lu felt he could help connect these scattered voices to a wider audience. So far he’s been right, but it hasn’t been easy: Navigating China’s pervasively censored Internet has required Lu to be in tune with a rapidly changing online lexicon to stay ahead of the censors. Words like “protest,” “strike,” “riot,” and “demonstration” often don’t last long online. Internet users sometimes respond by writing in code, mixing Chinese characters with Roman letters, using metaphors, and other tricks. Using a list of more than 100 phrases he’s developed, which he refused to share, Lu believes he can capture most of the protests being shared online. Lu archives several dozen to more than two hundred incidents a day. He preserves pictures, descriptions of the events, comments from participants, and links to the source posts. Lu is able to avoid having his Internet cut-off by local police by using wireless Internet cards. As a result, his IP address changes constantly.

[…] Lu said that he tries to verify what he sees. If a photo or a tweet has no corroborating sources, Lu does not post the incident on Weibo or Twitter. Lu said there have been “a few times” when the details of his reports turned out to be inaccurate, particularly details about the number of protesters. But Lu said he is being as careful as possible.

[…] Wang Jiangsong, a labor relations specialist and professor at China Institute of Industrial Relations in Beijing, wrote on Weibo that Lu’s work “documents and promotes the truth about labor and citizen movements, and it’s great public service.” […] [Source]

Roughly 20 police removed Wang Gongquan from his home in Beijing on charges of disturbing public order shortly after noon on Friday, according to Chen Min, a family friend.

Mr. Wang, a sometimes outspoken critic of the government, is a prominent member of the “New Citizens Movement,” a loose collection of mostly white-collar urbanites who have issued calls for greater protection of the right to free speech and other individual rights enshrined in China’s constitution. Members of the group have also been aggressive in pressing officials to publicly disclose their assets.

[…] Founder of the venture capital arm of multibillion-dollar investment firm CDH Investments LLC, Mr. Wang is a colorful figure, known in China for his politics and romantic exuberance as much as for his success as an investor. Before his account was deleted, he was known to pepper the popular Twitter-like microblogging site Sina Weibo with a steady stream of poetry and social criticism. He grabbed headlines in 2011, when he announced Weibo that he was quitting his job and eloping with his mistress. He later returned to his wife and also went back to work, though he left his job again a short while later. [Source]

[…] Fellow Chinese, when the nest is upset no egg is left intact. Do not let our country fall any deeper into the abyss in the opposite direction of modern civilization without doing anything. Take actions to defend the effort to build a civil society, for, by doing so, we are defending ourselves, each one of us. [Source]

Wang: I am against street actions. I have never encouraged street actions.

SCMP: Why is that?

Wang: Because the Communist Party doesn’t allow it. It’s such a simple reason!

SCMP: Then what’s the meaning of your activism?

Wang: When the government hasn’t been able to well understand this, and can’t treat such matters with ease, you go into the street and they easily get nervous. And when they get nervous they resort to excessive defence. And that brings unnecessary trouble and sacrifice. That’s why I am against it. When I hear people talk about such things, I ask them not to do it. I don’t know if this puts me on the softer side among the circle of civil society activists. [Source]

“This is not what we are hoping for, but if, hypothetically speaking, the government did not have such generous tolerance, and insisted on looking at it this way, [and as a result I was] pressured or arrested, then there is nothing I can do, we believe this is the price we pay for being patriots. If it happens, then it happens, I am not deliberately preparing myself, because I have no such fear. Of course, I understand what you are saying, if that were true, what can I do? We would only wish everyone to be good citizens, we are only hoping to push for a new citizens movement, renew this society, all based on the maximum extent possible to obey the law. If in the end they still believe they must make arrests, they so be it, it is like us walking in the streets, of course are are on guard, but we would not avoid the streets altogether because we know there are thugs.” [Source]

Citizens who fight for justice may give headaches to government officials, they may be devoted believers, they may take on risk to defend what they believe to be right, they may helplessly sing the song “Eluding the Cat” or the “Grass Mud Horse” online (both songs challenge the authority of the regime – editor), they may have different views about the nation’s history, or they may be biased against the CCP, but they are not enemies of China. [Source]

As the international press left Wukan after its historic vote, Al Jazeera stayed on to follow the newly elected village committee in action. Over the course of more than a year, filmmakers Lynn Lee and James Leong documented Wukan’s unique experience with democracy.

From the high of the elections, to the grind of everyday work, to the dilemmas of leadership, this is a rare and intimate portrait of rural China in the midst of remarkable change. [Source]

The rest of the series will be shown in weekly installments on Al Jazeera throughout July. See earlier CDT coverage for more on Wukan and democratic reform.

While attempting to appease citizens by using all available channels for public communication, authorities have also been vigilantly extinguishing any spark that could potentially grow into an uncontrollable fire. The orders issued to stores in the Kunming area were not only intended to restrict the use of face masks as a form of symbolic resistance, but also to prevent the printing of materials used to mobilize for collective action. Furthermore, the upcoming China-South Asia Expo is set to take place in Kunming from June 6 to 10. Before and during any major event in China, stability maintenance is regarded as the top priority. The Olympics in 2008, the World Expo in 2009 and the 18th Congress in 2012 are all classic examples.

The orders, once exposed to the public, have been questioned and ridiculed. The Beijing Times (@京华时报) pointed out that the issuing of the orders is not only unreasonable but illegal. According to the Administrative License Law, government agencies beneath the provincial level may not establish any real-name registration system. In a tweet which was reposted more than 2,000 times, the People’s Daily tagged the mayor of the Kunming City, asking him for an explanation. Ironically, the account of the Kunming mayor was set up in early May to deal with the oil refinery dispute. [Source]

According to a 5/26 Yunnan Information News report, on 5/25 the Anning City Industry and Commerce Bureau Chief Yao Jingwei told a reporter that the face mask registration was a temporary measure to prevent the spread of avian flu and a convenient way to keep data on disease transmission.

[…] According to a Southern Weekend 5/21 online report, from the discovery of H7N9 Avian flu to the present day, China’s Health Ministries and Bureaus have reported 130 cases of H7N9, but none of the cases was diagnosed in Yunnan and no evidence of the H7N9 avian flu virus has been found in Yunnan. Also on 5/20, the day before Anning City’s Industry and Commerce Bureau issued the notice, Jiangsu province, Zhejiang province and many other provinces and cities officially ended their previously implemented preventative measures towards avian flu because flu transmission had considerably subsided. [Source]

Somewhat similarly, Chengdu police claimed on May 4th that the site of a planned protest against an oil refinery had been closed for an earthquake drill.

Dong Zhengwei, a lawyer based in Beijing, told the Global Times that both environmental protection law and the Constitution stipulate that residents should be able to access information that is related to their daily lives, however there are no regulations specifying conditions permitting an EIA [Environmental Impact Assessment] to be made confidential.

“If the first protest on May 4 was irrationally triggered by a lack of knowledge of oil refineries and PX,” Xiao said, “The second was caused more by the government’s secretive attitude.”

[…] “It is not that people don’t understand the importance of PX. They are not satisfied with the way the government has been dealing with the problem and they want to be heard,” Zhang Yiwu, a sociology professor from Peking University, told the Global Times. [Source]

The rise of the nimby movement is generally blamed on failings of Chinese environmental governance. But the differing strength of different interest groups is the real cause. That imbalance allows the powerful to use the system to their advantage, while the weak resort to less rational or even illegal forms of protest.

[…] China’s circumstances mean nimby campaigns sometimes succeed, but not because the public interest is being properly considered during the political decision-making process. Nor are they a solution for that failure. In nimby movements, with disorganised participants, the demands of the weak can be blown up to the extent they pose a threat to social stability.

The greater the impact of the protests, the more likely government is to pay attention. But there is no consideration of which group deserves to get what – only of maintaining social stability.

[…] With an imbalance of power and decision makers consciously or otherwise shirking their duties, the nimby problem may be insoluble. There’s plenty of polluting public infrastructure that can’t simply be cancelled – incinerators, sewage treatment plants, power stations must be built in someone’s backyard. If there is no effective system for balancing interests and forming consensus, problems will just be shuffled around, and China will have neither social harmony nor scientific development. [Source]

Whatever! … Everybody’s all ‘ah, democracy! The people are standing up!’ … PX seems to be the one thing you’re allowed to protest about … and then the protest is over and they move the plant 10 kilometers away and poison a bunch of peasants who don’t have Weibo …. But, you know, I remain optimistic. [Source (via Michael McDermott)]

]]>156842Police Quell Beijing Protest after Woman’s Deathhttp://chinadigitaltimes.net/2013/05/police-quell-beijing-protest-after-womans-death/
Thu, 09 May 2013 01:39:39 +0000http://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=155779A large protest broke out near a shopping mall in southern Beijing on Wednesday following the death last week of a 22-year-old migrant worker, according to Edward Wong of The New York Times, who reported that hundreds of police in riot gear arrived to contain the demonstration:

Word of the death spread on the Internet in the days after the woman, whose surname was Yuan, was initially said to have committed suicide by jumping from a top floor or roof of the mall, called Jingwen, last Friday. Rumors on the Internet said Ms. Yuan, a migrant worker from Anhui Province, had been raped by private security guards in the mall, where she worked, and might have been thrown to her death.

A shopkeeper who gave his name only as Mr Li said that some police had arrived at around 10am, followed by around 200 people who paraded down the street shouting “Protest! Protest!”

The rapidly growing number of officers then closed the road for the rest of the day, he said. Photographs of the scene posted online showed hundreds of people on the street, although it was not clear how many were protesters and how many were onlookers.

One bystander said that officers had clashed with protesters, beating them and dragging them into vans.

While police said a preliminary investigation and autopsy did not indicate foul play, and that the woman did not have any interaction with other people during the hours before she fell to her death, the state-run Global Times reported that the demonstrators demanded a more open investigation:

Rumors have been circulated online that Yuan was gang raped in a enclosed room inside the building by seven security guards, which led to her suicide, or that they even pushed her out. Yuan’s mother visited the Dahongmen Police Station supervising the market but was not allowed to see the surveillance footage, some Web users said.

The area where Ms Yuan worked is poor and is mostly populated by “outsiders” such as herself who work in the garment trading industry, according to residents. Scepticism of the police is widespread in China and many smaller protests across the country have been sparked by allegations of malpractice.

By Wednesday evening, the protest had dissipated amid heavy rain, but a large military presence was still visible, with dozens of parked buses carrying special forces, soldiers and police.

]]>155779“Little Hu” Thrown into the Guangdong Firehttp://chinadigitaltimes.net/2013/03/little-hu-n/
Tue, 19 Mar 2013 02:46:03 +0000http://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=153166Mimi Lau of the South China Morning Post reports that despite his reformist credentials, new Guangdong party chief Hu Chunhua has held his cards close to the vest while navigating a series of early tests:

His low-profile, opaque political agenda and seeming reluctance to outline his own policy ideas combined to make the rising political star almost invisible at the NPC meeting, China’s most important annual political event. His discreetness could be a strategy to hide his capabilities and bide his time – a self-preservation instinct that could help him grow wings before they are clipped prematurely.

If Hu does well in Guangdong, he is expected to be rewarded with membership of the Communist Party’s supreme decision-making body, the Politburo Standing Committee, in just under five years.

It is believed by many China watchers that the reason that Wang was unable to get into the Politburo Standing Committee in November was that his high-profile, reformist image was not well received by party elders.

Lau adds that Hu’s dark grey hair can “best be described as salt and pepper, with plenty of white mixed in with the grey.” He did not have much time to get comfortable in his new seat, as a face-off broke out in early January between propaganda officials and journalists at the Southern Weekly newspaper over a rewriting of the liberal publication’s New Year greeting. And earlier this month, a police blockade around the village of Shangpu evoked memories of Wukan as residents demanded democratic elections and challenged the local village head over a disputed land deal.

Hu’s handling of these incidents offers clues about his management style, according to Reuters, as his local performance will affect his chances for promotion to the upper echelons of China’s central government. But the Diplomat’s Zachary Keck claims that Hu has backtracked on the agreed terms that ended the Southern Weekly incident, and his government’s response to the Shangpu crisis “oscillated between insufficient repression and insufficient concessions,” performances that will likely come under heavy scrutiny in Beijing:

That being said, these incidents in no way doom Hu’s future prospects in the Communist Party in the same way that stalled economic growth might. Still, if President Xi Jinping is like his predecessors his early tenure will be characterized attempts to shore up his power base. This usually includes, among other things, diminishing predecessors’ ability to exercise influence through well-placed political allies, which former President Hu Jintao has in spades.

It’s not clear if Xi Jinping will seek to diminish Hu Jintao’s influence by targeting his allies and protégés. Ling Jihua’s fate certainly suggests he might, whereas his decision to make Li Yuanchao vice president suggests he may not be all that concerned about the former president’s protégés after all.

Still, if Xi does move against the Hu Jintao-led Communist Youth League faction, Little Hu will want to avoid giving Xi any ammunition to target him directly.

]]>153166Shine Has Worn Off Wukan’s Early Triumphshttp://chinadigitaltimes.net/2013/03/shine-has-worn-off-wukans-early-triumphs/
http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2013/03/shine-has-worn-off-wukans-early-triumphs/#commentsMon, 04 Mar 2013 15:39:13 +0000http://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=152251While a disputed land sale has sparked protests and demands for democracy in the Guangdong village of Shangpu, Reuters reports that “spring is over” in the nearby village of Wukan, which made headlines last year for holding elections after ousting its own village leadership in late-2011 land grab protests:

Reuters visited Wukan six times over the last year-and-a-half, chronicling the early protests, the uprising, its eventual triumph and now its disillusionment.

The events in Wukan focused keen attention in Beijing over a problem the central government had long underplayed – rampant land seizures across China. The government is drafting revised land management legislation for the annual parliament session in March that would require farmers – an estimated 650 million of them in China – to be adequately compensated and relocated before officials can expropriate any land.

But Wukan’s failure to overcome entrenched corruption shows how difficult it is for grassroots protest to spur lasting change in China. Towering above Wukan is a vast local, regional and national edifice of Party control and vested interests. Indeed, even the Xi administration’s push to overhaul the land seizure law faces opposition from developers, businesses and local governments that depend on property sales.

“For Wukan, amongst all the villages in China, to be able to rise up and protect their interests, then to conduct a democratic election and to become a kind of experimental ground, is significant,” said Peng Peng, a senior researcher with the Guangzhou Academy of Social Sciences. But the inexperience of the new leaders and their halting progress over the land issues has exposed the teething problems of nurturing village democracy in China, he added. “There can’t just be democracy, there needs to be solid administration, too.”

In its year in office, the committee has succeeded in returning 200 hectares of land sold off by the previous village chief, Mr Yang says. But many villagers are still determined to seize property for which the deeds were transferred to factory owners and businessmen several years ago.

Confronted with persistent criticism – in painful contrast to the adulation they once enjoyed of a once remarkably united village – Mr Lin and many committee members have contemplated resigning.

“I am afraid of seeing people, afraid of hearing my doorbell ring,” Mr Lin told a Shanghai television station last month. “Why? Because whatever I do or say now, people are able to find a way to blame me.”